A recent study shows that applying more pressure to teeth or brushing too long doesn't make them any cleaner and may increase the risk of oral health problems. Some electric toothbrush manufactures have also noticed this study, and therefore designed some electric toothbrushes with abilities of notifications when a person presses the brush at an excessive pressure unintentionally.
However, the known electric toothbrushes are mostly provided with a pressure sensor and a lighting indicator or speaker which inform the person to perform the tooth brushing at an optimum pressure level. Some reference documents such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,784,742A entitled “Toothbrush with adaptive load sensor”, U.S. Pat. No. 7,120,960B2 entitled “Electric toothbrushes”, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,493,747 entitled “Electric toothbrush”.
The disadvantages of such electric toothbrushes are that a person may accidentally ignore the notifications. For example, for those toothbrushes with lighting indicator, a person requires to brush their teeth facing to a mirror in order to see the lighting indicator. Sound indicator can also be ignored if a person is in an noise environment.
Accordingly, it is desired to seek means or a mechanism to provide an electric toothbrush with better notifications when pressing the brush at an excessive pressure from a person. The person can be physically noticed through gums and teeth that reminds the person to release the brush pressure.